Beadle's New Dime Novels: Bill Biddon, Trapper

This Beadle and Adams pulp dime novel, Bill Biddon, Trapper: Life in the Northwest by Edward S. Ellis (1860), follows two young men—William Belmond and Nathan Todd—who become separated from their emigrant wagon train while hunting antelope on the Kansas prairie. Belmond, a fortune-seeker drawn westward by gold-rush fever, and Todd, a Maine native eager to return home wealthy to marry his sweetheart, have joined a two-hundred-person caravan bound for Oregon and California. After pursuing their quarry too far and losing sight of the camp at nightfall, they resign themselves to sleeping on the open prairie. The narrative emphasizes frontier hardship, frontier camaraderie, and the uncertainties of overland travel, while establishing the historical authenticity of Hudson Bay Company operations and regional Indian tribes. The preface claims partial basis in fact, referencing orphaned sisters Docencia and Irene McRmment whose experiences occurred in California.